


The Last Drop

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 14:21:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17245751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: August's flash fiction challenge from Nathan Burgoine involves:A ghost storyfeaturing an earringlocated at a tobacco shop...and (cough) no more than 1000 words.Other stories are here:https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2018/08/13/august-flash-fiction-draw-roundup/





	The Last Drop

The Last Drop had been the surreptitious haunt of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her husband Percy, and a sampling of their favorite lovers while alive. But their posthumous patronage--along with another famous pair-- that led to the tobacco shop-slash-bar’s current prosperity.

The Shelley's were currently snuggled into the corner booth, him nuzzling her neck, her finger running down on another’s thigh, the fourth capturing the scene with charcoal directly onto the plastered wall. The last in their group held a finger in the air to catch the bartender’s eye.

“Absinthe?”

In any other place, the immediacy of his response would be good luck. Here, they could count on it. 

Noting their fountain still had most of its water, the barman sent over a bowl sugar cubes and enough of the spirit to light them up for the foreseeable future. Then his attention returned to the patron in front of him who had just asked a question. “No sir…”

“Call me Oscar.”

“Right…Oscar. I’m afraid I don’t read much poetry. Did you want a refill?”

The woman to his right shot her hand forward, empty glass at the ready. “Absolutely.”

Dolly was practically the man’s twin in looks and character but it was common knowledge that she was both wilder than Wilde and his niece.

Her fangs dropped when her gaze dropped to his neck. The uncle’s came down as well. The bartender rolled his eyes and shook his head, reaching back for a bottle of whiskey and one of her favorite cigars. She responded to the rejection with a pout. “But you’re so…” she started and her uncle finished, “…divine.” The sentiment was punctuated with a sigh as the poet’s cheek sunk into his palm.

A loud knock bellowed through the room followed by a louder chorus. “Don’t let him in!” The hipster reaching for the door froze and slunk back to his seat ignoring the roomful of eyes--dead, undead, and living alike--following him.

The priest was at it again.

He’d been uninvited at least a dozen times but somehow, someway worked the new clientele to get back in. And every time he did, a good customer got banished.

Ben Kester, the founder and proprietor entered through the back door and growled, “Keep him out of here,” scanning his eyes across the room and stopping at the young man in tweed who was shrinking into his chair. “Last time that bastard crossed that threshold, we lost Blackbeard. His ghost anyway." Ben slung a white towel over his shoulder and looked up at the painting of the pirate whose real earring pieced the canvas. It was all of him they had left.

Ben joined Riley behind the bar. His protective arm wrapped around the bartender—a move meant as much for his boyfriend as the poet—and nipped at his neck before starting the double-pour of Guinness for the lad at the other end of the bar.

A gust of wind swept through the place. That damned holy man took up the doorframe. He’d hitched his way in on the tails of the newly dead. In this case, a wide-eyed brunette wearing only lipstick and a priest’s collar that had somehow transferred to her when they crossed the threshold.

Ben leaped over the bar, splitting the divide between Wilde junior and senior in an effort to prevent the guy from completing his first step on the ground. Ben’s ground. Ben’s carefully unhallowed, unsanctified space he’s crafted for over five hundred years. All the cleansing. All the intent. All those rituals wiped clean with a visit.

The wood creaked under the priest’s weight. It was too late. Again.

“What’s with you, Claudio? Don’t you ever learn? Get out!”

The priest flung arcs of holy water ahead of him and to his sides before dropping to his knees and beginning the rite.

_From all evil, deliver us, Oh Lord._

Not the beginning of the rite, then. The priest had clearly started outside the door. No sooner had the words been spoken that the floor below them lost its definition. If this was allowed to continue, it would start whirling. Next, the gate would be open.

_From all sin, from your wrath…_

Ben took in the room. Those at the table to his left now circling the figure on the floor. They had rope; this would stop nothing. The artist with the Shelleys took notice and started a new portrait to the left of the one just abandoned.

_By your baptism and holy fasting…_

In a flash, Ben saw the five hundred years, three continents, and over a dozen wars it took to find Riley. It couldn't end now. The priest needed to be shut down and shut up.

But the room was spinning and his feet wouldn’t obey.

_By the coming of the Holy, Spirit, the Advocate…_

On the other side of the room, Oscar Wilde, poet and provocateur, begun floating helplessly toward the priest. His eyes, wide with fear, and fangs dripping with his own blood, he hissed. The sound was feral. Every note of that sound was ripe with all he had suffered before, all that had taken him from life too early.

Those around the room focused and sounded with another chorus, more slowly this time. “Not Oscar.” More clientele now drifting to the spot where the priest was kneeling, their hands held out as if that could stop them.

A sure hand plugged Ben’s ears with cotton and pressed passed him to grab the vial of holy water and secure the priest's hands. The priest fought back but Riley was stronger. While the ghosts and undead around him hovered ever closer, Ben rushed the priest, stopping the ritual by stuffing his mouth with his bar towel.

Oscar’s fear morphed into hunger. He pulled at the priest’s hair, sunk his fangs into the man’s neck, and efficiently exsanguinated him. When he was done, he wiped his mouth with a grimace. “You would expect with all that goodness, he would have tasted better than that.”

Now resting lifelessly on the floor, Ben could appreciate the priest was actually quite beautiful. “You didn’t want to turn him, then?”

“Oh, gods no. I have always said that some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. He’s clearly the latter. Now, as for the former…”

At the back of the room, Dolly caught Mary’s eye and licked her lips before puffing on her cigar. “Those two will be at it within the hour,” Riley said under his voice, knowing—as he always knew—Ben wouldn’t want to speak of what had had almost transpired. Right in front of him Wilde’s eyes drifted toward the downcast hipster and continued his earlier thought. “I have a wonderful idea for turning that young man’s apparent guilt into happiness, indeed.”

Ben's smile turned to a grimace as the ghost of Father Claudio Reynaud appeared at the bar with his other patrons, who froze, watching him. The priest took in his surroundings afresh and closed his eyes.

Finally, he asked, “I don’t suppose you have any Balkan Sobranie behind that bar of yours, do you?


End file.
